the ghost of a tremendous pie. It was a
Yorkshire pie, like a fort—an abandoned
fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had a
fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at
every meal, to put the pie on the table. After
some days, I tried to hint, in several delicate
ways, that I considered the pie done with;
as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of
glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates
and spoons into it, as into a basket '; putting
wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but
always in vain, the pie being invariably
cleaned out again and brought up as before.
At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I
was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and
whether my health and spirits might not
sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie,
I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the
musical instrument of that name in a power
orchestra. Human prevision could not
have foreseen the result—but the waiter
mended the pie. With some effectual species
of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in
again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.

The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal.
I made an overland expedition beyond the
screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth
window. Here, I was driven back by stress
of weather. Arrived at my winter quarters
once more, I made up the fire, and took
another Inn.

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall.
A great annual Miners' Feast was being
holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling
companions presented ourselves at night
among the wild crowd that were dancing
before it by torchlight. We had had a
break-down in the dark, on a stony morass
some miles away; and I had the honor of
leading one of the unharnessed post-horses.
If any lady or gentleman on perusal of
the present lines, will take any very tall
post-horse with his traces hanging about
his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-
rein into the heart of a country dance of a
hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman
will then, and only then, form an
adequate idea of the extent to which that
post-horse will tread on his conductor's toes.
Over and above which, the post-horse, find-
ing three hundred people whirling about
him, will probably rear, and also lash out
with his hind legs, in a manner
incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his
conductor's part. With such little drawbacks
on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared
at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder
of the Cornish Miners. It was full, and
twenty times full, and nobody could be
received but the post-horse—though to get rid
of that noble animal was something. While
my fellow-travellers and I were discussing
how to pass the night and so much of the
next day as must intervene before the jovial
blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright would
be in a condition to go out on the morass and
mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth
from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor
of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon,
ale and punch. We joyfully accompanied
him home to the strangest of clean houses,
where we were well entertained to the
satisfaction of all parties. But, the novel feature
of the entertainment was, that our host
was a chairmaker, and that the chairs
assigned to us were mere frames, altogether
without bottoms of any sort; so that we
passed the evening on perches. Nor was this
the absurdest consequence; for when we
unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way
to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his
position, and instantly disappeared. I
myself, doubled up into an attitude from which
self-extrication was impossible, was taken out
of my frame, like a Clown in a comic panto-
mime who has tumbled into a tub, five times
by the taper's light during the eggs and bacon.

The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me
a sense of loneliness. I began to feel conscious
that my subject would never carry me on
until I was dug out. I might be a week here
—weeks!

There was a story with a singular idea in
it, connected with an Inn I once passed a
night at, in a picturesque old town on the
Welch border. In a large, double-bedded
room of this Inn, there had been a suicide
committed by poison, in one bed, while a
tired traveller slept unconscious in the other.
After that time, the suicide bed was never
used, but the other constantly was; the
disused bedstead remaining in the room empty,
though as to all other respects in its old state.
The story ran, that whosoever slept in this
room, though never so entire a stranger, from
never so far off, was invariably observed to
come down in the morning with an impression
that he smelt Laudanum; and that his
mind always turned upon the subject of
suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he
might be, he was certain to make some reference
if he conversed with any one. This
went on for years, until it at length induced
the landlord to take the disused bedstead
down, and bodily burn it—bed, hangings, and
all. The strange influence (this was the
story), now changed to a fainter one, but
never changed afterwards. The occupant of
that room, with occasional but very rare
exceptions, would come down in the morning,
trying to recall a forgotten dream he had had
in the night. The landlord, on his mentioning
his perplexity, would suggest various common
mon-place subjects, not one of which, as he
very well knew, was the true subject. But
the moment the landlord suggested "Poison,"
the traveller started, and cried " Yes! " He
never failed to accept that suggestion, and he
never recalled any more of the dream.

This reminiscence brought the Welch Inns
in general, before me; with the women in
their round hats, and the harpers with their
white beards (venerable, but humbugs, I am
afraid), playing outside the door while I took